A precursor to the Abeling Gravity Motor

[ovyyus]

Surprise, surprise. The very second figure I looked at showed a significant eccentricity.

300 years of paper expansion/contraction can result in significant changes to image aspect ;)

[Fletcher]

Hey Frank .. every time you flatten or turn it over & foreshorten a spring you change its CoM i.e. it gets lower to below the axle line [center of rotation], if I understand you correctly - usually this leads to keeling.

I played extensively with rubber band motors many years ago - my variation was to use folding levers pivoted at the rim - they in turn were connected thru pulleys to the rubber bands & the weight of the lever was to stretch the band which was in turn connected to a cam wheel [the opposite of a shifting/eccentric rim] - it didn't work for me & got horribly bound up with friction.

Look forward to your experiments.

[Grimer]

Surprise, surprise. The very second figure I looked at showed a significant eccentricity.

300 years of paper expansion/contraction can result in significant changes to image aspect ;)

Agreed. I thought of that and tried to see if the hatching showed up any sign of distortion. But unfortunately, unlike more modern hatching which would be done with a pair of parallel rulers Bessler's hatching looks virtually freehand so no evidence there one way or t'other.

[Grimer]

Hey Frank .. every time you flatten or turn it over & foreshorten a spring you change its CoM i.e. it gets lower to below the axle line [center of rotation], if I understand you correctly - usually this leads to keeling.

I played extensively with rubber band motors many years ago - my variation was to use folding levers pivoted at the rim - they in turn were connected thru pulleys to the rubber bands & the weight of the lever was to stretch the band which was in turn connected to a cam wheel [the opposite of a shifting/eccentric rim] - it didn't work for me & got horribly bound up with friction.

Look forward to your experiments.

I see what you're saying and it's an interesting point. I suspect that keeling will be more intense under point loading than under uniformly distributed loading however.

At this stage practicalities are not important.

If the principle can be demonstrated then the rest is merely engineering.

As far as your rubber band motor is concerned most people make the mistake of not realising that the band has to be stretched to almost breaking point as discovered by Bill Beaty (and possibly others). That is why there is only one really decent example of a RBM on the web.

If you are looking forward to my experiments I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed. I only experiment with ideas, with mental objects not physical objects. I left all that dangerous experimentation to others.

Fortunately I didn't lose anyone.

[Grimer]

Hey Frank .. every time you flatten or turn it over & foreshorten a spring you change its CoM i.e. it gets lower to below the axle line [center of rotation], if I understand you correctly - usually this leads to keeling.

Thinking more about "keeling" I think you will find this will not occur if the top and bottom surface fibres are kept within their elastic limits in tension and compression.

I'd never met that rather neat term before. It does give a very graphic description of a fold bump. I tried (not very hard) to track down a web reference to it but couldn't.

[Fletcher]

"keeling" was a term coined here by a long term member "Mr Tim" - it denotes when the CoG gets below the axle [or whatever] & acts like a pendulum seeking & finding its balance point - Bessler called it "PQ" [punctum quietus] & there is another latin phrase that Wagner & Bessler traded [see stewart's forum - send him a PM asking to join his forum if you are not already a member - a wealth of excellent information & research & translation] - basically once the CoG gets low it acts like a keel of a yacht wanting to stand it up, hence 'keeling' - it is also visually suggestive that the object will seek & find lowest Pe & where there is zero torque aka balance position - keeling is much simpler :7)

[Michael]

I always liked stall;

"an instance or the condition of causing an engine, or a vehicle powered by an engine, to stop, ".

[Grimer]

"keeling" was a term coined here by a long term member "Mr Tim" - it denotes when the CoG gets below the axle [or whatever] & acts like a pendulum seeking & finding its balance point - Bessler called it "PQ" [punctum quietus] & there is another Latin phrase that Wagner & Bessler traded [see Stewart's forum - send him a PM asking to join his forum if you are not already a member - a wealth of excellent information & research & translation] - basically once the CoG gets low it acts like a keel of a yacht wanting to stand it up, hence 'keeling' - it is also visually suggestive that the object will seek & find lowest Pe & where there is zero torque aka balance position - keeling is much simpler :7)

Thanks for that explanation, Fletcher. I didn't realise it was in-house jargon. No wonder I misunderstood it completely.

[Grimer]

It is fortunate that the Rubber Band Motor (RBM) exists as a precursor for the Perpetual Gravity Motor (PGM) since it provides a very simple to understand demonstration of how gravity drives an eccentrically supported wheel rim.

I believe the main stumbling block for the traditionally trained engineers and physicists is the fact that every element of mass in the total wheel describes a closed path in the gravitational field. Whatever path an element of mass takes the energy lost must equal the energy gained so where on earth is the extra energy coming from.

After all 1/2 mv^2 lost = 1/2 mv^2 gained, doesn't it?

Mmm....

What people forget it that the v^2 term in Kinetic Energy has two roots, +v and -v.

At this point people get very confused by the fact that v is a vector and has direction as well as magnitude. Forget about the vector aspect and think merely about the magnitude aspect.

Velocity can have a negative magnitude as will be shown shortly. This means that the above line beginning "After all..." should be written more fully as:

After all 1/2 m(+v)^2 lost = 1/2 m(+v)^2 gained, doesn't it?

Indeed it does. The PGM gets its energy from the other half of the kinetic energy, 1/2 m(-v)^2, which is normally hidden from view except in explosions of cannons (where, it's been suggested by member Hans von Lieven, Bessler discovered it) and in nuclear explosions where as every schoolboy knows,

E = mc^2 = 1/2.mc^2 blown outwards and 1/2.mc^2 blown inwards.

In the case of cannons and PGMs we are not dealing with light speeds of course.

Now cannon recoil is pretty easy to understand but where in the case of the PGM is the 1/2 m(-v)^2 hiding?

It is hiding in the tensile strain of the deflected spokes.

Look at it this way. The energy within a material can be thought of as kinetic energy on a atomic scale. In a nominally unstressed beam this can be represented by a characteristic velocity, V, say. When the gravitational wind deflects the beam, half the energy is stored as tensile strain and half as compressive strain. The characteristic velocities for the two halves of the beam are now V + v for the half in compression and V - v for the half in tension. So we have offset energies of 1/2 m(+v)^2 and 1/2 m(-v)^2.

It is this second energy term which is being released by the PGM.

Members who followed the "Impact is the key" thread will recognize this hidden term as the additional deflection the takes place under sudden loading of a beam as compare to slow loading of a beam. I'll dig out the relevant bits of that thread in a later post.

[scott]

How many personalities do you have, James?

[Grimer]

As promised I've gone back to the Impact is the Key thread and dug out the relevant bit as far as 1/2m(-v)^2, the hidden part of the kinetic energy is concerned. It starts here and dribbles on and off for quite a few pages.

I read the thread from the beginning and can appreciate why Ovyyus got pissed off with me. Trouble is, when one is grasping at a new idea there is the temptation to be more dogmatic that one should as a kind of defence mechanism. Shoot first in case the anyone else is faster on the draw.

My main worry was how on earth to transfer the extra impact deflection over to the other side of the axle. I never dreamt that it could be as simple as using the impact beam as a biased (bent) spoke and simply allow the rotation of the wheel to invert it.

I'll have to prepare some simple diagrams to show the way gravity lengthens the spokes on the falling side of the eccentric rim and shortens them on the rising side.

If anyone can see any show stoppers pipe up quick like Jim did with my reaping the whirlwind model.
(I think that particular model must have been influenced by the fact my brother was a Halifax bomb aimer in Butcher Harris's thousand bomber raids. Jim blew that model out of the sky even faster than the Me 110 which downed my brother's plane. Fortunately he survived and is long retired down in Cornwall).

[ovyyus]

I read the thread from the beginning and can appreciate why Ovyyus got pissed off with me. Trouble is, when one is grasping at a new idea...

Your idea was not new, so there was little to grasp or get pissed off about in terms of content. However, stating possibilities as though they were fact, as you do, serves no real practical purpose. Except of course that it's a well proven method of increasing participation in a subject to otherwise unwarranted levels ;)

[Grimer]

New or not, thanks to the insights I have gained from the "Impact is the Key" thread I think I now understand the principles underlying a Perpetual Gravity Motor. You will find these principles illustrated in the "Gravity acts like a spring thread" on the Community Buzz forum.

In deference to you I will not claim to have solved the Bessler problem but merely say that it seems to me I just might possibly have found a solution to the task of abstracting a continuous supply of energy from the gravitational field.

There's no conceivable way it's Bessler's solution - but then he did say that there was more than one way I believe.

Of course, I could be wrong, and let's face it, I probably am. But for the life of me I can't see where. No doubt the more experienced members of the forum such as your good self will be kind enough point out to me the error of my ways.

[primemignonite]

With a wry smile on no doubt, Scott, our Administrator,
inquires thusly:

"How many personalities do you have, James?"

To which the correct response proffered becomes:

"So-far, SIX that are identifiable, each serving as
VASSAL SLAVES to my actual one."

James (I)



(Once again, 'borderline'!)

[ovyyus]

...No doubt the more experienced members of the forum such as your good self will be kind enough point out to me the error of my ways.

I did and your deference is appreciated :)